EACC: How counties hinder fight against corruption
The CEO of the Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission (EACC), Mr Twalib Mbarak, has listed the challenges that commissioners face when they visit county offices to conduct their investigations.
In an advisory to all governors and County Assembly Speakers, the CEO listed ten areas that have hindered the commission’s mandate following a corruption risk assessment.
Twalib cited the lack of records management policies and procedures manuals to guide and assign responsibilities for records management across all institutional functions as one of the impediments to its mandate.
Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission (EACC) CEO Twalib Mbarak has listed down the challenges that the commissioners face whenever they visit county offices to do their investigation.
The EAC boss raised ten areas that have become hindrances to the Commission’s mandate following the Corruption Risks Assessment exercise that was carried out.
Twalib said the lack of record management policies and procedure manuals to guide and assign responsibilities for the management of records across all the institutional functions, is one of the hindrances to its mandate.
The CEO also said that the lack of designated registries to centralize receipt and dispatch of mail and ensure the systematic creation of authentic, reliable, and accessible records is common in counties.
“This gap leads to discretion in the management of records such as letters, loss of correspondences, and leakage of confidential information,” Twalib said.
The absence of record management professionals in counties designated to implement suitable record management systems has also been highlighted by the Anti-Corruption Commission as a challenge in its investigation.
According to Twalib, an inappropriate classification system to allow systematic arrangement and filing of records in counties is another challenge that has led to the loss of critical references.
Lack of inventories for records and related assets has also been named as a challenge on the way, which needs to be addressed by governors.
He said in his statement that the lack of retention, and disposal schedules in counties had encouraged unauthorized destruction of records and a huge accumulation of unappraised records that frustrates access to required documents.
Other issues include a lack of budgets for record management, inadequate and congested storage facilities, lack of sound planning and failure to streamline the existing records, and poor tracking, control, and retrieval systems.
County Governments have been asked to submit a comprehensive action plan to the commission on streamlining Records Management within a period of sixty days from the day when the advisory was issued and to provide quarterly reports on the implementation progress.